the same hands therefore I will venture to leave all our author's knowledge of the old comedy, and his etymological learning in the word, Desdemona.

Surely poor Mr. Upton was very little acquainted with fairies, notwithstanding his laborious study of Spenser. The last authentic account of them is from our countryman William Lilly; and it by no means agrees with the learned interpretation: for the angelical creatures appeared in his Hurst wood in a most illustrious glory,—“ and indeed, (says the sage,) it is not given to many persons to endure their glorious aspects."

The only use of transcribing these things, is to shew what absurdities men for ever run into, when they lay down an hypothesis, and afterward seek for arguments in the support of it. What else could induce this man, by no means a bad scholar, to doubt whether Truepenny might not be derived from Tpavov; and quote upon us with much parade an old scholiast on Aristophanes ?-I will not stop to confute him nor take any notice of two or three more expressions, in which he was pleased to suppose some learned meaning or other; all which he might have found in every writer of the time, or still more easily in the vulgar translation of the Bible, by consulting the Concordance of Alexander Cruden.

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But whence have we the plot of Timon, except from the Greek of Lucian ?-The editors and critics have been never at a greater loss than in their inquiries of this sort; and the source of a tale hath been often in vain sought abroad, which might easily have been found at home: my good friend, the very ingenious editor of the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, hath shewn our author to have been sometimes contented with a legendary ballad.

The story of the misanthrope is told in almost every collection of the time; and particularly in two books, with which Shakespeare was intimately acquainted; the Palace of Pleasure, and the English Plutarch. Indeed, from a passage in an old play, called Jack Drum's Entertainment, I conjecture that he had before made his appearance on the stage.

Were this a proper place for such a disquisition, I could give you many cases of this kind. We are sent, for instance, to Cinthio for the plot of Measure for Measure, and Shakespeare's judgment hath been attacked for some

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deviations from him in the conduct of it: when probably all he knew of the matter was from madam Isabella in the Heptameron of Whetstone. Ariosto is continually quoted for the fable of Much ado about Nothing; but I suspect our poet to have been satisfied with the Geneura of Turberville. As you like it was certainly borrowed, if we believe Dr. Grey, and Mr. Upton, from the Coke's Tale of Gamelyn; which by the way was not printed till a century afterward when in truth the old bard, who was no hunter of MSS. contented himself solely with Lodge's Rosalynd, or Euphues' Golden Legacye, quarto, 1590. story of All's well that ends well, or, as I suppose it to have been sometimes called, Love's Labour Wonne, is originally indeed the property of Boccace, but it came immediately to Shakespeare from Painter's Giletta of Narbon. Mr. Langbaine could not conceive, whence the story of Pericles could be taken; "not meeting in history with any such Prince of Tyre;" yet his legend may be found at large in old Gower, under the name of Appolynus.

Pericles is one of the plays omitted in the latter editions, as well as the early folios, and not improperly; though it was published many years before the death of Shakespeare, with his name in the title-page. Aulus Gellius informs us, that some plays are ascribed absolutely to Plautus, which he only re-touched and polished; and this is undoubtedly the case with our author likewise. The revival of this performance, which Ben Jonson calls stale and mouldy, was probably his earliest attempt in the drama. I know, that another of these discarded pieces, The Yorkshire Tragedy, hath been frequently called so; but most certainly it was not written by our poet at all: nor indeed was it printed in his life-time. The fact on which it was built, was perpetrated no sooner than 1604: much too late for so mean a performance from the hand of Shakespeare.

Sometimes a very little matter detects a forgery. You may remember a play called The Double Falshood, which Mr. Theobald was desirous of palming upon the world for a posthumous one of Shakespeare: and I see it is classed as such in the last edition of the Bodleian catalogue. Mr. Pope himself, after all the strictures of Scriblerus, in a letter to Aaron Hill, supposes it of that age; but a mistaken accent determines it to have been written since the mid dle of the last century:

The word aspect, you perceive, is here accented on the first syllable, which, I am confident, in any sense of it, was never the case in the time of Shakespeare; though it may sometimes appear to be so, when we do not observe a preceding elision.

Some of the professed imitators of our old poets have not attended to this and many other minutia: I could point out to you several performances in the respective styles of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare, which the imitated bard could not possibly have either read or construed.

This very accent hath troubled the annotators on Milton. Dr. Bentley observes it to be a tone different from the present use. Mr. Manwaring, in his Treatise of Harmony and Numbers, very solemnly informs us, that "this verse is defective both in accent and quantity, B. III. v. 266:

His words here ended, but his meek aspéct
Silent yet spake.......

Here (says he) a syllable is acuted and long, whereas it should be short and graved!"

And a still more extraordinary gentleman, one Green, who published a specimen of a new version of the Paradise Lost, into BLANK verse, "by which that amazing work is brought somewhat nearer the summit of perfection," begins with correcting a blunder in the fourth book, v. 540 :

Enough of such commentators.-The celebrated Dr. Dee had a spirit, who would sometimes condescend to corroct

him, when peccant in quantity: and it had been kind of him to have a little assisted the wights abovementioned.-Milton affected the antique; but it may seem more extraordinary, that the old accent should be adopted in Hudibras.

After all, The Double Falshood is superior to Theobald. One passage, and one only in the whole play, he pretended to have written:

Strike up, my masters;

But touch the strings with a religious softness:

Teach sound to languish through the night's dull ear,
Till melancholy start from her lazy couch,

And carelesness grow convert to attention.

These lines were particularly admired; and his vanity could not resist the opportunity of claiming them: but his claim had been more easily allowed to any other part of the performance.

To whom then shall we ascribe it?-Somebody hath told us, who should seem to be a nostrum-monger by his argument, that let accents be how they will, it is called an original play of William Shakespeare in the King's Patent prefixed to Mr. Theobald's edition, 1728, and consequently there could be no fraud in the matter. Whilst, on the contrary, the Irish laureat, Mr. Victor, remarks, (and were it true, it would be certainly decisive) that the plot is borrowed from a novel of Cervantes, not published till the year after Shakespeare's death. But unluckily the same novel appears in a part of Don Quixote, which was printed in Spanish, 1605, and in English by Shelton, 1612.-The same reasoning however, which exculpated our author from The Yorkshire Tragedy, may be applied on the present

occasion.

But you want my opinion:-and from every mark of style and manner, I make no doubt of ascribing it to Shirley. Mr. Langbaine informs us, that he left some plays in MS. These were written about the time of the Restoration, when the accent in question was more generally altered.

Thus a

Perhaps the mistake arose from an abbreviation of the name. Mr. Dodsley knew not that the tragedy of Andromana was Shirley's, from the very same cause. whole stream of biographers tell us, that Marston's plays were printed at London, 1633, by the care of William Shakespeare, the famous comedian.-Here again I suppos",

in some transcript, the real publisher's name, William Sheares, was abbreviated. No one hath protracted the life of Shakespeare beyond 1616, except Mr. Hume; who is pleased to add a year to it, in contradiction to all manner of evidence.

Shirley is spoken of with contempt in Mac Flecknoe; but his imagination is sometimes fine to an extraordinary degree. I recollect a passage in the fourth book of the Paradise Lost, which hath been suspected of imitation, as a prettiness below the genius of Milton: I mean, where Uriel glides backward and forward to heaven on a sun-beam. Dr. Newton informs us, that this might possibly be hinted by a picture of Annibal Caracci in the King of France's cabinet: but I am apt to believe that Milton had been struck with a portrait in Shirley. Fernando, in the comedy of The Brothers, 1652, describes Jacinta at vespers:

Her eye did seem to labour with a tear,
Which suddenly took birth, but overweigh'd
With its own swelling, drop'd upon her bosome;
Which by reflexion of her light, appear'd

As nature meant her sorrow for an ornament:
After, her looks grew cheerfull, and I saw
A smile shoot gracefull upward from her eyes,
As if they had gain'd a victory o'er grief,
And with it many beams twisted themselves,
Upon whose golden threads the angels walk
To and again from heaven.---

You must not think me infected with the spirit of Lauder, if I give you another of Milton's imitations :

"The ancient poets," says Mr. Richardson," have not hit upon this beauty; lavish as they have been in their descriptions of the swan. Homer calls the swan long-necked, exodeípov; but how much more pittoresque, if he had arched this length of neck !"

For this beauty, however, Milton was beholden to Donne; whose name, I believe, at present is better known than his writings :